The memorial service for my brother-in-law Scott was put together by his co-workers from the meat packing company Stoltzfus Meats where he worked that was located just down the road. There was a public park across the road from the meat plant and the organizers decided it would be a good convenient place to have his memorial service at the park pavilion. It was very convenient for them and their co-workers.
Rita and the family had little or no say in the matter of the organizing and scheduling of the event and certainly not the location. Scott had passed away in Florida on July 17th. They scheduled the memorial service at this community park near Lancaster PA for September 28th. They made the time of the service at 6 pm on a Thursday evening after work. This location and time was good for the workers at Stoltzfus but not convenient for Rita and the family many of whom had to travel some distance to attend the service. A weekend day would have been much better for most people other than the workers. I understand that they would have wanted to have some kind of memorial service for Scott for the people he worked with but this should not have been the service for everyone from anywhere. It would have been much better having it in the Harleysville area for both Scott's and Rita's families and the many people he worked with over the years in meat packing plants in the area. But it was not to be because the folks from Lancaster where in control of the service.
The service itself was very beautiful and there were plenty of people from Stoltzfus who spoke up about working with Scott. However, the park pavilion was not very nice and was somewhat crude in construction. Everyone had to sit at picnic benches except the back of the building where some portable tables were set up. There were some issues with this location because the only thing it had going for it was the closeness to the workers. Someone said that Scott liked to walk around this park during his work breaks to contemplate his faith in the lord... ok then.
Before the service the organizers served a dinner where each table of guests one by one went to the front of the pavilion for food. Stoltzfus food of course. Becky and I thought the food was terrible. Nothing was good. Now maybe I'm just not used to the style of packaged meats from Lancaster PA but there was no taste in the ham or whatever it was. The packaged cole slaw was tasteless as was the potato salad.
It got dark during the service and the community park did not have lights. There were no bathrooms in the pavilion and folks needed to walk some distance down a hill to the public bathrooms. There were no lights along the path and people needed a flashlight to see their way. I tried it with my phone flashlight but it didn't work. I ended up not going to the restroom. At the end of the night people struggled to find their way to the parking lot. No lights there either.
Fortunately for me and Becky we had parked close to the pavilion and we were able to navigate our way out of the park. We had a room at the motel just a minute down the road from the park so we had it easy. Most people other than the meat company folks had an hour and a half to two hour drive home. We would drive back to Katie's house in Philly the next morning.
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